A long dispute between the Philippines and China escalated in 2011 over tiny islands in a portion of the South China Sea that the Philippines announced on June 13 it had renamed the West Philippine Sea. China, however, claimed the entire South China Sea, including areas off the coasts of five other countries that may contain petroleum and natural gas beneath major shipping lanes. This led to several naval incidents between China and the Philippines during 2011. In March two Chinese patrol boats harassed an oil-exploration vessel sent by the Philippines to Reed Bank, an area claimed by the Philippines. The Philippines also accused Chinese forces of having shot at Filipino fishermen and having marked some islands as Chinese property.

On July 20, 2011, on Philippine-occupied Thitu Island—one of the Spratly Islands in the South …

Rolex Dela Pena/AP

Pres. Benigno S. Aquino III ordered an improvement in the Philippines’ limited ability to defend the islands. In a nationwide address on July 25, Aquino said, “We must let the world know that we are ready to protect what is ours.” Armed forces—mostly using half-century-old equipment—were to be modernized with U.S. help, he said. As a start, a decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard patrol vessel was acquired. The government announced in September that it would procure other military equipment, with a key goal being to protect the $4.5 billion Malampaya Natural Gas and Power Project located 80 km (50 mi) off the coast of Palawan Island in an area claimed by China. The project was supplying half the energy for the Philippines’ main island, Luzon.

Aquino visited China in late summer to discuss the dispute and trade with Chinese Pres. Hu Jintao. Aquino told reporters that the two agreed on the need for a maritime code of conduct to defuse tensions. Both countries also pledged to double bilateral trade—which had reached $27.7 billion in 2010, an increase of 35% from 2009—to $60 billion by 2016.

In his July 25 address, Aquino claimed that production of rice, a staple of the Filipino diet, had increased 15.6% as irrigation and other agricultural improvements had spread. He added that this pointed toward an end to rice imports and maintained that the proportion of people not getting enough to eat had dropped from 20.5% to 15.1%. Some 1.4 million jobs had been created in 2011 up to April, Aquino said, reducing the unemployment rate from 8% to 7.2%.

Government revenues increased 18% in the first four months of 2011, almost twice as fast as the economy grew, as Aquino emphasized attacks on corruption and introduced easier methods for paying income taxes. The country depended heavily on remittances from its large overseas workforce, but turmoil and policy changes in the Middle East had reduced the amount of money being sent home.

Despite Aquino’s claimed accomplishments, he was heavily criticized. Oscar V. Cruz, a retired archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church, said that Aquino was incompetent and should resign. A leading media commentator, Amando Doronila, faulted Aquino for lacking a vision for the country and for such judgment lapses as buying an expensive sports car.

Former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was arrested on November 18 while in the hospital for what she claimed was a rare bone disease and was charged with having fixed votes in the 2007 legislative elections. President Aquino also accused her of other corrupt practices while she was in office. On December 12 the House of Representatives voted to impeach Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona for alleged breach of public trust by favouring Arroyo in court rulings. Both Arroyo and Corona denied all charges. Corona’s impeachment trial was scheduled to start in mid-January 2012, but by the end of 2011, no trial date had been scheduled for Arroyo’s case.

Insurgencies continued to plague the Philippines. On August 4 Aquino met in Tokyo with the chief of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which had fought sporadically for decades for a separate state in the southern islands. That meeting and discussions in Malaysia, however, failed to reconcile the two sides. An MNLF official said that negotiations, which had been held intermittently since 1997, had not addressed the “real issues” of authority for regional Islamic peoples.

Typhoon-generated rains in late September and early October flooded parts of the northern Philippines and killed at least 100 people. In December some 1,250 people died and hundreds were missing after storms produced flash floods that devastated parts of Mindanao in the south. Both storms caused extensive property and infrastructure damage. In Mindanao entire villages were washed away by the flooding, and tens of thousands were left homeless.

Learn More in these related articles:

Elsewhere in East Asia, Marlon Rivera took satiric aim at trends in Filipino independent cinema in the lively comedy Ang babae sa septic tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank), a local hit. Indonesia came forth with Madame X (Lucky Kuswandi), the irreverent tale of a transsexual superhero battling intolerance.

The South China Sea remained a point of contention between China and neighbours such as Vietnam and the Philippines, all of which had territorial claims there. In May and in June, Vietnam complained that Chinese fishing vessels had interfered with oil-exploration activities. China countered that Vietnamese naval vessels had expelled Chinese fishing boats from contested waters. Meanwhile, the...

island country of Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. It is an archipelago consisting of some 7,100 islands and islets lying about 500 miles (800 km) off the coast of Vietnam. Manila is the capital, but nearby Quezon City is the country’s most-populous city. Both are part of the...